Culture

How Overly Attached Girlfriend Avoids Being Typecast

Most 21-year-old women would be horrified to wake up and find themselves the poster child for clingy, stalker girlfriends. But when a meme is born, you just have to roll with the punches.

Laina, better known as "Overly Attached Girlfriend," takes full responsibility for her character, while still managing to separate her famous web identity from normal life. In fact, it's ironic how down to earth this young woman truly is.

Laina only goes by her first name, after copycat characters adopted the name "Laina Walker." She gained traction on the web in June 2012 after entering a Justin Bieber fan contest. After submitting a parody video in response to a sing-off competition endorsing Bieber's new perfume "Girlfriend," Laina quickly went from a semi-finalist with a sense of humor to a full-blown macro meme.

Reddit lit the flame that exploded the video, followed by a nod from Gawker. The video, titled "JB Fanvideo," has since been viewed more than 15 million times, spawning hundreds of thousands of captioned images featuring Laina's eerie stare and half-open smile.

"A lot of people ask me if I am offended by the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme. I always tell them that I made that video, and I acted that way. I put that out there," Laina tells Mashable in a phone interview.

The 21-year-old is the youngest of four children, all of whom she says are very close. When asked how her family and friends react to the character, Laina assures us they enjoy it — even when they don't exactly understand it.

"My grandparents didn't even know what YouTube was," jokes Laina. "Once they figured it out, they thought it was cool and started sharing it with all of their friends. Of course none of their friends knew what a meme was."

Offline, Laina gets recognized in her Texas hometown just about everywhere she goes. It's no surprise, as Overly Attached Girlfriend has appeared in Samsung commercials and most recently as part of a skit on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.

Like most memes, Laina's stardom stemmed from a character that the Internet named. Therefore, she must embrace the meme in order to please her fans. Scumbag Steve, for example, finds that identifying with the meme persona is the only option. After all, fighting against web culture can cause things to spiral out of control.

However, Laina is confident that fans understand the difference between her and Overly Attached Girlfriend's persona. A glance at her Twitter account (and its 150,000+ followers) proves the opposite of crazy and stalkerish; it's comedic and laid back.

"I think most people understand that it's just a character, and I'll come back to it every once in a while," she says. "I think I've separated myself from it."

Overly Attached Girlfriend is just one character within many styles of comedy that Laina hopes to pursue — her ideal job would be writing and acting in sketch comedy, like Saturday Night Live. Until now, that type of future was a pipe dream, but her YouTube channel has opened doors that make it seem possible.

One of the most unique things about Overly Attached Girlfriend's situation is that the Internet actually tried to clean up her act. Reddit users attempted to spin the meme into a positive opposite: "Misunderstood Girlfriend," which Laina says she was in no way involved with.

Though Laina has come to terms with it now, she recalls a mixture of confusion, excitement and skepticism as her character organically unfolded on the web.

"When the video blew up, I had no idea that YouTube was a career for some people and that there were these networks. It was this whole other world. I didn't have a clue," she admits.

Shortly after Overly Attached Girlfriend was born, though, Laina signed to Big Frame, a media firm that guides YouTube creators in audience development, monetization and building sustainable careers on and off of the platform.

Laina now creates videos full-time, releasing a new video every Thursday. This persona has "opened a lot of doors," right as some appeared to be closing. When the first video blew up, Laina was attending school to become a teacher, but had just decided it wasn't her true passion.

"This video has allowed me to travel and meet different people and develop more of a sense of what I want to do," Laina says.

Despite the newfound fame, Laina balances normal young adulthood and Internet sensation. She's managed to accept the hand she's been dealt and roll with it, achieving a healthy balance between Laina and Overly Attached Girlfriend.

"I've definitely learned lately that I can't possibly know where I'm going to be even, like, a month from now, so who knows?" she says.

Mashable
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